Bypass plans shoot up by another £1m

PLANS for a controversial bypass have rocketed by a further £1m, taking the total figure to a staggering £16m – before any building work has even begun. The new cost of the Mottram to Tintwistle road scheme has cost another £1m in the last six months, it was revealed in an answer to a Parliamentary question.

PLANS for a controversial bypass have rocketed by a further £1m, taking the total figure to a staggering £16m – before any building work has even begun.

The new cost of the Mottram to Tintwistle road scheme has cost another £1m in the last six months, it was revealed in an answer to a Parliamentary question.

The £1m rise came over the last six months alone, costing the taxpayer about £39,000 a week during that period.

Highways Agency officials are currently working on their fifth attempt to get the plans right for the 3.5-mile bypass, which opponents of the proposal describe as ‘a licence to print money’.

The proposed route will divert traffic from the A628 and congested roads in Mottram, Tintwistle and Hollingworth, on the edge of Tameside.

A delay-hit public inquiry at Stalybridge Civic Hall was adjourned in December last year and is unlikely to resume before late autumn 2009. And campaigners claim it could enter the record books as the country’s longest-ever public inquiry into a road.

The public inquiry into the M6 toll road in Birmingham, which ran between June 1994 and October 1995, holds the record.

The Mottram hearing started in June 2007 and was expected to last 10 weeks.

It is unclear whether the M6 record, which sat for every day until it concluded, will be beaten as the Mottram hearing has only sat for 15 days over the past 18 months.

A spokeswoman for the Highways Agency said: "The £16m has been spent on the scheme in its entirety. The cost incurred has been spent on paying consultants working on the revised evidence for the public inquiry. The economic and traffic assessment as well as traffic and environmental models are also incurring costs. Evidence for the public inquiry will be ready in May next year and exhibitions to explain the differences will follow that. It will be up to the independent inspector to decide when the public inquiry resumes."

A spokesman for the internet blog ‘No Mottram Bypass’ said: "We’re here again – six months down the line and the costs have risen another £1m, and the inquiry is not due to resume for at least another six months, possibly more.

"Presumably, that means the Highways Agency have a blank cheque from the government and have permission to ratchet up at least another £1m between now and then. In these times of supposed thrift, this scheme seems to be a licence to print money."

Residents of Mottram, Tintwistle and Hollingworth have called for a bypass since the 1970s to reduce the thousands of HGVs and other vehicles using the roads through their villages.